How to overcome anger

From Amma’s Satsang, Amritapuri Ashram

Getting angry is like having a bad business where we end up losing everything. Actually in life, one should gain the Self (Atma), the ultimate “profit”. But when we get angry it is like making a loss at business. Our life is not a bubble, we have to remember that we are the entire ocean. Pampering the bubble of the ego will lead us to death yet we only pamper perishable things like the body while not taking care of the Atma. We should enquire “who am I?”, and understand that we are not the bubble but the vast ocean.

Anger equates to lose because when we get angry the body becomes affected by it, which in turn will lead to diseases like blood pressure etc and might eventually even result in a stroke. Anger can also be likened to a mosquito which spreads malaria and as a result, everyone will get the disease. One’s children and wife or husband will bear the brunt of one’s anger, and if we cannot take our anger out on them we will take it out at the workplace on our subordinates who in turn will go home and vent the anger upon their wife, who will then, in turn, take the anger out on the children. The children will then lose their peace of mind as a result and when they go to school they will create endless trouble for others. Thus it is like a chain. But it is certainly possible to overcome anger if we are intelligent about it and use our discrimination and ask for forgiveness.

Next time when anger arises in your mind pay attention to the gap between the thoughts. Normally the thoughts and emotions come together forcefully one after another and we then lose our discrimination and become identified with the anger. But if we can stand apart from the thoughts as a witness, there will be light, and with the resulting Viveka (discrimination) we will be able to control our anger.


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